


Why Faith Can't Be a Pirate

by bellatemple



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-23
Updated: 2005-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-26 22:54:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone at the new Watcher's office is talking like pirates, but they won't let Faith join in.  Faith hates being left out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Faith Can't Be a Pirate

**Author's Note:**

> Another of my bizarro silly fics, based on an inside joke between me and my college Bostonian friend. Enjoy.

It all started the day Faith came downstairs in the morning to find Andrew wearing pantaloons.

That's not entirely true, when she thinks about it. It started before that, but she didn't really NOTICE it until she saw Andrew wearing his ridiculous outfit. Maybe it started when Xander came back from Africa with a monkey. Maybe it even started before that. If she's entirely honest with herself, she can see that the seeds were planted when Xander lost his eye and started wearing the patch.

However it started though, it didn't come to a head until nearly two years after Sunnydale sank into the California coastline.

It had seemed like a perfectly ordinary day, when she first woke up. The sun was streaming in her window, birds were singing in the English sky, and Xander's monkey was staring at her from its perch atop her headboard.

Yeah, okay, so the monkey might not be what people thought of as ordinary. It was one of those little, cute ones that you always see in the movies, the ones that wear little hats and vests and cause outbreaks of horrible, flesh eating diseases. It'd apparently been the pet of one of the African slayers who didn't make it, and in spite of Willow's insistence that the monkey belonged in its natural habitat, or barring that, in a zoo, Xander insisted on keeping it.

Which meant that it basically had free range of the Council living quarters. It seemed to prefer Faith's headboard to any of the fake trees that Xander had made for it. So in the weeks since the little bastard had come home with the one-eyed wonder, Faith had grown used to finding it staring at her when she woke up.

"Get the fuck out of my room, you little shit," she said to it, upon opening her eyes.

"Eeek!" said the monkey.

It wasn't until Faith went downstairs, the monkey sitting on her shoulder and clenching its little monkey- hands in her hair, to find Andrew in pantaloons, Dawn in a skull-and-crossbones bandana, and Xander in his usual outfit of flannel and jeans, forever sporting that eyepatch, that she realized something was very, very wrong.

"Arr, ye landlubber! Ye'll be wantin' yer grub, methinks!" said Andrew, when he saw her standing in the doorway to the kitchen, staring at them. "Shiver me timbers!"

Faith closed her eyes and shook her head. When she opened them again, Andrew was still staring at her with a hopeful look, while Dawn in her bandana and Xander in his patch scribbled away on a napkin and conversed quietly between themselves.

"Andrew," Faith took a step into the room. "What the hell are you wearing?"

"I be Andrew no longer, ye scurvy dog! I be Brownpants, the Terrible!" Andrew brandished his plastic hook-hand in what he must have thought was a menacing manner. "Arrrrr!"

Faith stared at him for a long moment, before letting her eyes slide sideways to gaze imploringly at Dawn and Xander. Dawn caught her look and grinned.

"It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrr!"

"You gotta be kidding me."

Dawn shrugged and then turned back to the napkin. It had what looked like a cartoon treasure map carefully drawn on it in black ink. She pointed to a spot about halfway along the dotted line leading to the X. "What about here?"

Xander ignored Faith completely. This was nothing new. Ever since she'd shown up in Sunnydale the last time, she and Xander had said maybe three words to each other. Faith figured he'd talk to her when he was ready to, and not a moment before, so she never pressed the issue. Frankly, if the cyclops didn't want to make an effort, she didn't see why the hell she had to. "Pit full of stakes," he said, and Dawn nodded and began drawing a large hole filled with pointy sticks.

The monkey let out an ‘ook' and jumped down from Faith's shoulder to cling to Xander's head. The man didn't even blink.

Andrew appeared then, at Faith's other shoulder, clutching a plate full of scrambled eggs and round sausage patties. "Breakfast, ye landlubber!"

Faith glanced at the plate. "Thanks, ‘Drew."

"Brownpants the Terrible!"

She glanced down at his baggy, brown trousers. "You got that right. How long are you planning to be doing this shit? ‘Cause I'm planning on not being anywhere near you until you're done."

"Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day! We be puttin' together our motley crew of sea dogs and gen'rally unruly buggers! I be the lookout. Madam Molly Cutlass here," he nodded to Dawn, who smirked, "be the firs' mate, and that manly--er--scurvy bastard of a fella thar be Cap'n Harris Maroon, most feared pirate in these here waters!"

Faith raised an eyebrow. This was started to lean less towards annoying and more towards mildly amusing. "And who would I be in your, ah, ‘motley crew'?"

Andrew considered the question. Dawn frowned slightly, tearing her eyes from their napkin treasure map again. Xander grunted without looking up. "You can't be a pirate."

Faith blinked. It wasn't just the fact that, though he seemed to be as into the treasure map making and crew forming as the other two, he wasn't speaking in a particularly pirate-y way. With that one sentence, Xander had just more than doubled the number of words he'd said to her in two years. She stared him. The monkey stared back, baring its teeth.

"What the fuck do you mean, I can't be a pirate? I can damn well be a pirate if I want to."

"Can't," said Xander, then stood and left the room. Faith spent a moment formulating the most devastating curse she could think of, involving, of all things, spackle and a particularly nasty word for a female leopard's sexual organs, then spat it out under her breath. She turned to see Andrew and Dawn staring at her. They shrugged in unison.

"Thar Cap'n has spoken!" Andrew brandished his hook half heartedly. "Arr."

* * *

In all honesty, Faith would have happily just declared them all to be morons and dismissed the entire "Talk Like a Pirate Day" thing as a waste of time, if it weren't for Xander's outright refusal that she be allowed to be a pirate. She would have ignored that, even, though she absolutely hated being left out of things, but as the day went on, more and more people were added to Xander's "crew". Willow and Kennedy wore matching gold hoop earrings and pirate-y sneers when they finally emerged from their love nest. Vi and Rona sported three cornered hats ala Johnny Depp in _Pirates of the Carribean_ and even Robin seemed to have gotten into the spirit, peppering his usually dignified speech with the occasional ‘ye' or ‘arr'. Only Giles and Buffy seemed immune from the pirate fever as they went about their days, training the new slayers and researching the next big bad. Finally, Faith couldn't take it any more. She hunted down Xander, who was sitting in the living room with his monkey and Willow, making a list of crew members and their new pirate names.

Someone had even made the monkey a tiny black eyepatch. Faith had had enough.

"I'll be a goddamned pirate if I wanna be a goddamned pirate." She folded her arms across her chest and glared down at Xander and his monkey. He still didn't look at her.

"You're from Boston," he said, as though this were a perfectly obvious explanation of her exclusion from the crew list.

"What the fuck?!" Faith rolled her eyes. "Do you know how many goddamned pirates were from Boston?"

Willow nodded her head. Faith had no doubt that the witch did, in fact, know exactly how many pirates came from Faith's home town. She caught Faith's dangerous glare and shrugged sheepishly. "He's the captain,"

"Jesus Christ on a stick!" Faith threw her hands up. "You people are insane. Who here has stolen things for fun? Who here was the bigger bad ass in her teens? I'd be fifteen thousand times a better pirate than anyone else in this house!"

Xander's shoulders rose and fell in a heavy motion. He still wouldn't look at Faith. She was having a hard time reading his expression, since he had his blind side turned to her. "You can't BE a pirate, Faith."

Faith growled, spun on her heel, and left the room.

She'd show Cap'n fuckin' Harris Moron who was a better pirate.

She'd show him but good.

* * *

The trouble, of course, was that Faith had no desire to return to her former bad ass state. Sure, she was still the sexiest thing on two legs, and she still had more attitude that anyone else, EVER, but she wasn't the same carefree, devil of a girl that she'd been as a teenager. She'd seen the consequences of her actions, and had voluntarily served time to try and atone for them. She knew she could outfight, out-curse, and out-sail anyone in the house, but she had no idea how to prove to Harris that she could be the best damned pirate he'd ever seen.

Of course, the gang in the house didn't seem to be interested in raping and pillaging, or even sailing the seven seas. They were just dressing up and talking like idiots. The whole thing was incredibly stupid. They looked like assholes, in their bandanas, and hats, and earrings, and ESPECIALLY that fucking eye patch.

Why the fuck didn't Xander just get a fuckin' prosthetic, anyway? It wasn't like he didn't have the money for it. Giles was paying all of them very well, and the NHS might provide for it free of charge, anyway. No, the patch was some kind of aesthetic shit. Like he wanted to look like a bad ass. Or remind B of her horrible mistake. He was playing the pity card, wearing that patch like that. And if there was one thing that Faith could never stand, other than being left out of things, that is, it was a fuckin' passive aggressive pity whore.

And why the FUCK couldn't Faith be a pirate?

It took very little effort to break into Harris' room. Faith had learned to pick locks at a young age, and all the locks on the dorm rooms in the Council house were the old fashioned, iron kind. The ones where you could peer into the keyhole and see what was going on on the other side.

Security inside the Council was a joke. It was the external security that would kick your ass.

The question was, what to steal? It wasn't like Xander had all that much in the first place. Just that damned eyepatch and that damned monkey, really.

Maybe she should steal the monkey? Set it free, like. Very PETA. Not too pirate-y, though.

She stared around his bedroom. There were four wooden monkey trees, a four poster bed, an empty bookcase, and an enormous wardrobe.

There wasn't a helluva lot else.

She went for the wardrobe first. It was really the only place to hide anything of value. It was locked, but she made short work of that and pulled open the doors.

The goddamned thing held five flannel shirts of varying plaids, two pairs of jeans, and a shoebox. She wasn't about to steal his clothes, so she went for the shoe box. It was a battered, dented thing, scarred from travel and frequent openings. She pulled it out, and caught herself as she reverently put it on the bed.

What the fuck did she care if it seemed like he cared about the thing? If it looked like the place that he held all his most personal, precious possessions? She was a bad ass, dammit. A pirate. They didn't care about anybody.

The box was heavy, like it was filled with rocks instead of paper. On top of the stack was a yellowing newspaper article featuring a picture of the school bus at the edge of the crater, where the emergency services had met up with them. The photo was blurry and faded, but she could still make out the look of smug satisfaction on Buffy's face as she thought about not having to be the "chosen one" any more. That look had gotten on Faith's nerves, as much as she understood it. But, dammit, she hadn't been the "chosen one" for a long time.

Okay, so she pretty much was when Faith was comatose, and in jail. Not the point.

Faith set the fragile newsprint to one side and dug deeper.

There were photos, of the African slayers, and of the gang at the council house, going back to the first, hectic weeks in the flea-bag motel outside of Oxnard before they'd managed to work out exactly what they were doing. Even the most recent picture, featuring Willow, Buffy, and Dawn with the monkey from a few weeks ago, was worn with frequent handling. The ones towards the bottom, dating back to the first few days after Sunnydale, were creased, scratched, and dusty. Faith held them for a long moment, marveling at how he kept them with him when he was traveling in Africa. How many times had he almost lost them? How many other photos had been in the box, but were left behind along the way?

What the hell was she thinking? She was getting sentimental again. Xan--HARRIS was an creep! She was getting back at him!

For what, though? Not letting her be a pirate?

In a matter of moments, Faith felt her inner bad ass wither and die. What the hell was she doing? She leaned forward to put the pictures back and tuck the shoe box away.

This was all the monkey's fault.

The door opened behind her, and she straightened quickly. Harris himself stood there, staring at her with that one-eyed, considering glance that creeped her the fuck out. She fumbled for a moment with the lid of the shoe box, then stuck out her hip and crossed her arms, and tried for a cynical sneer.

She was pretty sure it came out as more of a guilty smile. Crap.

"What are you doing in here, Faith?"

She shrugged. "Nothin'."

"You're looking through my stuff." He glanced towards the shoe box on the bed, then back at her. With that eye-patch, it was next too impossible to read his expression.

"Maybe." Faith raised an eyebrow. "Your point?"

One side of Xander's mouth twitched. "WHY are you looking through my stuff?"

And something in Faith's brain, something that always seemed to know the right answer but spoke up only on rare occasion, suddenly shouted "fuck it!" and she told him the truth. "I'm looking for something to steal."

Xander nodded, his lips still twitching. "Steal?"

"That's what pirates do, innit?"

The twitching lips resolved into a smile for a split second, before Xander's face went cold again. "For the last time, Faith, you CAN'T be a pirate."

Goddammit, she'd had more than enough of this. "Why the FUCK not?! And don't you dare give me that Boston bullshit."

The smile returned for longer this time. "Say ‘arrrrr'."

"What?"

"Say it."

Faith stared at him for a long moment, looking for some kind of trick. He just stared back. His expression was much too easy to read, now. It said "I'm waiting".

"Arrrrr."

Oh.

She suddenly understood. Her Boston might have faded a lot from her voice, but some things didn't really change, did they. She'd meant to say "arrrr". What she'd actually said was "ahhhhh". Harris was grinning like an idiot now. He was right. She couldn't be a pirate if she couldn't say "arrrr".

So she decked him.

The End


End file.
